Make This: Peanut Butter Banana "Ice Cream"

A few months ago I saw this post from The Kitchn about making banana ice cream with just one ingredient: banana. I was intrigued, made a mental note to try it, and then never did. Until a few weeks ago. Oh frozen banana, where have you been all my life? This is good people. Good.

I kept doing silly things like making banana bread with my old bananas, or, heaven forbid, eating them all before they even got mushy. Finally I made a mental note to buy tons of extra bananas, and freeze the ones that were left after they had turned brown, mushy, and ultra sweet. Nom! One afternoon a few weeks ago I decided I could go for something sweet, so I pulled out two of my frozen bananas. I popped them in the food processor with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter and let her rip. At first it didn't look like much, just bits of icy banana and some brown goop stirred in. Then, after about 45 seconds, something happened. It magically morphed from eh looking chunks to a smooth, delicious-looking cream. I knew it was ready.

I plopped it into a bowl, took a bite, and...wow! Creamy, sweet, peanut buttery, and of course, banana! Since it was cold, the banana flavor wasn't overpowering, and the peanut butter gave it just a fantastic punch of flavor. It seriously could have passed for some form of ice cream if I didn't know better.

Husband heard my moans of pleasure and came running, asking what I was eating. I didn't tell him. I handed him the bowl and told him to try it. He did. Then he brought the bowl possessively to his chest and gave me a look that said "I am prepared to fight you to keep possession of the contents of this bowl". In other words, he loved it. He knew I hadn't bought any ice cream at the store, so he was confused on where the bowl of deliciousness had come from (by the way, I love that feeling when something so delicious comes out of the kitchen that your loved one looks at you like you've whipped magic out of thin air?). Our exchange went something like this:

Husband: What is this?

Me: Banana ice cream!

Husband: ...

Me: It's just whipped up frozen banana with a little peanut butter.

Husband: Is there more?

Me: Sure. I only made this batch, but there are more bananas and it only takes a minute.

Husband: Good. This one is mine.

I don't know why, but I haven't made it since. I rarely go in the freezer, so I think it's a case of out of sight, out of mind. Also, I'm probably too busy shivering from cold because it is cold all of a sudden. But I have a nice collection of frozen bananas stocked, so I'm ready for round 2!

Make this. It's cheap, easy, and delicious. You will not be disappointed.

And if you're interested, I store my frozen bananas by removing the peels, wrapping them individually in plastic wrap, and then putting them all together in a gallon ziplock freezer bag. That way they're all ready to use, and they don't stick together. I like to let my bananas get nice and brown and mushy before I freeze them because that's when I know the starches have broken down into delicious sugars.

Update: I made this again for dessert last night, and it was every bit as delicious as I remembered! So creamy, so sweet. Nom! This time I did 3 bananas with the intent of splitting it with Husband. I'd recommend sticking with 2 if you're using a Cuisinart food processor. The third banana proved too much for the blade to handle and it kept balling up and getting stuck without creaming. I have to stop and stir it up several times, a problem I didn't have with 2 bananas.

This Bread Will Change Your Life

After last weekend, in which I basically did nothing but shop for food and cook, I wanted an easy food week. Of course, I am terrible at time management, so while it was easier, I wouldn't say 4 hours in the kitchen is too easy. Why do my recipes always take longer to make than I think they will? Ah well. Husband was very understanding the last few weeks. I really wasn't in the mood for meat (Me not in the mood for meat? Imagine that!), so I went pretty meat-lite. Husband likes his meat, but he was kind of enough not to complain (of course, his mouth could have just been too full of pork bao), so this week I made a crap-ton of chicken. Here's what I made this week:

• Nutella and roasted hazelnut challah, courtesy of Steamy Kitchen. That's right, nevermind the 5.5 lbs of chicken I made, let's start with dessert. Because really, this bread is fan-frakking-tastic! I haven't had Nutella since I was in high school, and one look at that picture had me running to the store to buy some. This recipe is in two parts: the dough recipe, and the challah recipe. The dough recipe makes a whole lotta bread, probably about 2 large loaves worth. The challah recipe tells you to tear off a piece about the size of a grapefruit, which ended up a loaf of ~8-10 small slices. I liked this idea because now I have dough sitting in my fridge ready for a mid-week treat. This recipe was very easy, though extremely messy. Flour is your friend. And remember when you're letting the final loaf rest before baking, it's best to move it onto the baking sheet first. I let it rest on my cutting board, and the Nutella tried to escape on me! I think I'll make another loaf tonight (because Husband and I polished the first one off almost immediately), though this one we'll take in to work because while it tastes like a gift from the gods, it ain't calorie free. One note on the dough: after I mixed in the 7 cups of flour, the dough was still quite sticky, too sticky to knead with, had the recipe called for it. I figured I'd have to mix in more flour after its overnight rise, but to my surprise the next day it was completely workable. Just make sure to flour your hands.
• Chicken Mirabella, courtesy of Serious Eats. This is my one of my boss's favorite dishes. She goes on and on about the chicken mirabella she got a few times from one of those places that sells food already prepped, you just take it home and cook it. So when I found this recipe, I immediately sent it to her. She still hasn't tried it, but it was one of the first recipes that came to mind when I decided it was going to be a chicken week. I didn't use whole chickens. I ended up using 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I think I only ended up baking them for about 45 or 50 minutes, and that worked great. I also forgot to marinate them overnight, but they still got a good 8-9 hours of marinade time, so I think it was enough. Now I'm not a big fan of chicken, so you won't be hearing the words delicious or fantastic, but I'll say it turned out good. It's moist and flavorful. Should I make this again, which I think I will, I would add more olives, just because I love them. This recipe seems like it would be good for entertaining, a crowd pleaser.
• Whole wheat pasta with roasted red pepper sauce, courtesy of The Pioneer Woman. I had this on the side of the Chicken Mirabella. I'm not really satisfied with how these flavors went together, but I think the sauce still turned out good. I used half and half instead of cream and threw in some peas and asparagus for added veggies, and a ton of fresh basil because I had bought a whole big bunch at the store. Overall, I think it turned out a tad bland. It's still a good recipe, but it needs....something. Maybe some acid? I think I miss the acid that would come from a tomato sauce. Ah well, it's something to play around with.
• Chicken Scallopine, courtesy of The Pioneer Woman. If there's one way I like chicken, it's breaded and fried. Of course, I'll take covered in flour and cooked in a bit of butter if that's the best I can do. Again, I used half and half instead of cream. I think the sauce could have used the cream though. It was also a little bland. What I really should have done was let it cook off more. The recipe said to only let it cook off for a minute, but after a minute it was still very watery. I think 5-10 minutes would have yielded a nicer, more concentrated flavor. Ah well, next time. Also, I would about triple the mushrooms. I prefer a much higher mushroom to chicken ratio when I can help it. I also served this over some whole wheat pasta. Yum! Oh, also, I only used 4 chicken breasts instead of 6, but they were huge, so it probably ended up being the same amount. Hammering them out was a lot of noisy, noisy fun. My puppy did not approve.
• I was inspired to do a light salad on the side of the chicken scallopine based on this recipe. I cut up some cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, an orange bell pepper, and a cucumber. I added some very thinly sliced red onion and a ton of chopped fresh basil. I should have left it at that, but I decided to add some olive oil and raspberry vinegar. Even though I went light on it, I didn't like how the flavor turned out. I'm really not big into salad dressing, I just didn't realize how much until now. I offset the dressing flavor by adding some goat cheese. Goat cheese really does make everything better.

My favorite part of making the challah was Husband's reaction to both the Nutella and the finished bread. When I told him about the recipe he sounded pretty indifferent. He said it sounded pretty good, but he really didn't like Nutella by itself. I was flabbergasted, to say the least. How could my chocolate and nut-loving husband not like Nutella? What's not to like!? Well after I was done smearing gobs of Nutella into the challah, I started to lick off the spoon. I love Nutella, so there may have been some moaning involved. Husband came running to my noises of pleasure and demanded to be let in on the delicious action. I reminded him that he didn't like Nutella plain, and he said he was willing to give it another try. After I was able to wrestle the jar back from him (for after one lick of my spoon, he delved it back into the jar for more), I called BS on his lie! Of course he liked the Nutella, just as I knew he should have! He claims it doesn't taste like he remembers. I think his brain must have holes in it.

Next weekend I'm having a few friends over for a 4th of July BBQ. On the menu are hamburgers, hot dogs, bbq chicken, panzanella, roasted mustard potatoes, strawberry shortcake, and apple pie. Yum! Oh, I'm also going to try my hand at making my own hamburger/hotdog buns. Don't worry, I'm going to buy some at the store for backup. I'm hoping I'll have enough food left over to pick at during the week because after all that food, I really don't think I'll want to make any more the next day. Heh.

Dumpling Delight!

One thing I always order when at a Japanese restaurant is miso soup. I love miso, I love soup, so it's a match made in heaven. I had seen some discussions on miso soup on some blogs, but was confused by all the unfamiliar ingredients. What is dashi?! It's apparently the most important part of the soup: the broth. How do I get it? That unanswered question had kept me from trying to make my own miso soup for...well ok, only 6 months. But last week I found the answer! Dashi is made by heating up water with sea kelp (konbu) and these nasty fish flakes I don't want to know too much about (aka: bonito). Well those seemed like ingredients I might be able to actually find in a store. To be safe, I planned a trip to my local Asian food market. I'll admit I don't particularly like going to the Asian food market. It's 20 miles away, the parking lot is always full and the spaces are tiny. It's always crazy crowded inside, and the aisles are so narrow that two carts can barely pass by each other. And it smells like fish, which I find to be a very unappetizing smell (I avoid the fish counter at the grocery store too). So I figured if I was going to make the trip, I might as well find some other Asian dishes to make.

Somewhere along the way in my food blog perusing last week I came upon a recipe for pork bao. For those of you not hip to the lingo, pork bao, or Cha Siu Bao, are those steamed bbq pork dumplings you have at dim sum. Never had dim sum? Then you haven't lived! Go and eat some right now! I also found a recipe for some shrimp dumplings that are also something similar to what I've had at dim sum. And this week's Asian food theme was born.

• Miso soup, courtesy of Serious Eats. This isn't really a recipe, more like an explanation of ingredients and general guidelines. At the very least, it's very informative! I ended up reading this through several times, and then writing my own recipe from it. I'll post that over the weekend, hopefully. The soup used a lot of scary ingredients, but it ended up being pretty simple, and very easy (minus the ringing of hot fishy broth through a cheese cloth, that was rather gross). I'll have to play around with the proportions. I think the miso soups I've had in most restaurants are still better than what I made, but I still thought it was yummy. I ended up buying two kinds of miso at the store, barley (because that's what the guy in the article used), and white because I needed white for another recipe. I tried both kinds in the soup and they tasted so similar I don't think it really mattered. The white miso looked closest to what I get in restaurants, so I assume that's what they use.
• Pork Bao, courtesy of Cdkitchen. This recipe required quite a few items from the Asian market of the condiment/sauce persuasion. Namely, sweet soy sauce, hoisin sauce, and oyster sauce. Other than the sweet soy sauce, which I had never heard of before (it's thicker and sweeter (obviously) than normal soy sauce), you can buy hoisin and oyster sauce at a regular grocery store. I figured, first, if I'm going all the way to the Asian market, I might as well get everything I can, and second, I've bought hoisin sauce at the grocery store before and it was disgusting. I don't know what the difference was between what I bought the first time, and what I bought this time, but what I bought this time tastes much better. Anyway, OMFG, these turned out fantastically delicious! The sauce was sweet, the buns were light and fluffy, and the pork was tender . My mouth is watering just remembering them. They are, sadly, already gone. One thing to understand about my husband, he eats pork bao like potato chips. He just pops them in his mouth whole and reaches for the next one while he's chewing. Seriously. It's hilarious. When we're at dim sum, he usually cleans out the lady's entire cart. He doesn't like having to wait for a second round. So needless to say, I had to do some major convincing (read: guilt tripping) to get these 24 buns to last 2 whole days. I was very proud of him. I actually got to eat one or two of them. Some tips on the buns: I used a steamer basket in a pot of water to steam the buns (4 buns at a time fit in mine, but I have a large one). This worked great, except the first round of buns stuck to the basket. The next round I sprayed some Pam first with the same result. Then I remembered pork bao at dim sum always have a bit of paper stuck to the bottom, so I tried cutting up squares of parchment paper to stick to the bottom of the bun while it steams. That worked like a charm, and they were perfect after that. Also, the recipe didn't specify, so I used pork rib meat. I was looking for something without a lot of fat.
• Chinese Chive Dumplings, courtesy of Use Real Butter. Tapioca starch and wheat starch were my Asian market items on this recipe. If you've ever made mochi or used Mochiko flour it has a similar texture to these starches. It's kind of like cornstarch. Kind of unpleasant to handle and it gets everywhere. Have I mentioned I need an apron? So I'm kind of a dummy and misread the recipe. I thought it said 1/4 cup wheat starch, not 1 1/4 cups, so I was surprised when my "dough" I was supposed to "knead" was still a liquid. I ended up just mixing in more starch (trading off between tapioca and wheat since it didn't specify) in 1/4 cup increments, until it stopped sticking to my fingers. It turned out fine, I think. I also couldn't find garlic chives, so I just used green onion. They turned out delicious! The dough had that wonderful gummy consistency I love so much. I usually make food to last the week, but these really didn't keep well. The next day the dough was tough and the flavor was gone (though popping them in the microwave helped a lot), so I would recommend a single meal with these. Also, I ran out of the shrimp filling after about 12 dumplings (the recipe is supposed to make 18), so I would recommend buying more shrimp, or doing what I did and find an alternate filling. I had ended up with extra red onion (more on that later) and savoy cabbage, so I minced the onion and sliced the cabbage very thing and sauteed them in vegetable oil until soft. I actually liked this filling better than the shrimp, though I think that's only because my shrimp were a little fishy tasting (I'm very picky about my fish being fresh which is why I mostly just eat sushi).
• Stuffed savoy cabbage, courtesy of Serious Eats. First off, I've never bought dried mushrooms before. I've always seen them in the store, but have only ever used fresh. Well this recipe called for dried porcini mushrooms. I figured, no biggie. I see that called for all the time in recipes, should be no problem. Wrong. None of the grocery stores I went to had any dried mushrooms at all. Why don't I just go live in a barn while I'm at it? One guy tried to give me fresh button mushrooms when I asked him where the dried mushrooms were located. The nerve! Thankfully Trader Joe's came to my rescue yet again with a mixed dried mushroom medley. It had porcini, oyster, and shitake mushrooms (and maybe some others I'm forgetting). I just picked out the oyster and figured it'd be good enough (and it was). I modified this recipe a bit to make it a little healthier. I used ground turkey instead of beef. I used brown rice instead of white. And I used whole wheat breadcrumbs instead of white (I just pulsed some slices of bread in my cuisinart). I couldn't tell the difference, or if anything, it gave the dish more flavor. My mom said she didn't think stuffed cabbage was very Asian, and I guess it's not, but the flavors will went pretty well, I think, with the other food. I'm not really a fan of ground turkey, and thankfully that flavor was completely masked by all the other great flavors going on. The tomatoes, the mushrooms, and the cabbage itself provided for some very flavorful mush. My favorite! One thing to note about this recipe, it doesn't use all of its onion! It calls for 1 heaping cup of minced onion, but the recipe itself only ever calls for 1/2 cup. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the other half. I just left it out, and don't think it was even missed.
• Sweet summer corn and edamame salad with walnut-miso dressing, courtesy of Serious Eats. Oh man, this was good. This is one of those great recipes that takes minutes. If you used frozen corn, it would literally take as long as defrosting the veggies. I'd seen recipes that used mirin in the past, so I looked for it several times at several grocery stores and never found it. No problem, the Asian market had 10 different kinds. Of course, the next day, I found some at my local grocery store. Go figure. I must say, edamame is darn filling! The dressing was light and sweet and have I mentioned how much I love miso?

All successes this week, I think. Everything turned out so delicious, that it barely lasted! Good thing this is a short week at work because Husband polished off the last of the food for lunch today. I would make everything again. In fact, I found a recipe this week for sui mai. I'm thinking having some friends over sometime for some dim sum-type food would be a good way to go the next time. Of course, I'll have to triple of the pork bao recipe at least.

The Holiday Season

The best thing about the holidays is definitely the food. I love spicy holiday flavors. I love the smell of Noble Fur trees. And I love the cozy feeling I get in my house. Last weekend I curled up on my comfy sofa under a warm blanket with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate. I decided to try mixing a little pumpkin pie spice in and it turned out so delicious! This is definitely something I'll be repeating.

Oh yeah, and I love drinking that holiday hot chocolate out of my favorite mug, from my favorite bookstore in Mendocino.

Halloween Dinner

I had a couple friends over on Halloween (yes, I am only just now, almost a month later, getting around to blogging about Halloween) for a low key dinner.  It was the first time we had hosted guests at our house since the remodel, so even though it was low key, it was still special.  I still had the cooking/baking itch, so I made quite a spread: cauliflower and roasted garlic soup, chicken Marsala, chocolate chip pumpkin muffins, and chocolate pumpkin cookies. (I also made red potatoes braised in white wine, but I didn't make it from a recipe.  It's easy!  Just saute potatoes, add wine, add a nice herb like rosemary, and simmer until done!) Phew!  It was a lot of work!  But everything turned out delicious.  I'll have to talk about the soup in another post because 1) it was a practice run for Thanksgiving next week, and 2) I apparently forgot to upload the pictures I took.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have to show for the chicken Marsala.  Our guests showed up as it was cooking and I was a bit rushed to get everything on the table.  I've also found I'm a bit self conscious about photographing my food in front of anyone other than my husband.  He already knows I'm crazy, and I know I don't have anyone else fooled to the contrary, but I don't like clueing them in on exactly how crazy I am.  Anyway, I will say that it was very different from the chicken Marsala my mom used to make growing up, and it sure was delicious.   It wasn't super saucy (something that is a must for me for chicken usually), so I was surprised at how flavorful it was.  I would definitely make this again either for everyday or for entertaining. 

My favorite thing about fall is by far the food.  I love squash, and I love pumpkin!  Soup, cookies, biscuits, muffins, pancakes, scones, lattes (I just found out that if I ask for the pumpkin latte at Starbucks with 2 pumps instead of 3 it is actually quite delicious!), etc.  You name it, I love it.  So for a Halloween dinner I wanted to make some of the recipes I had been eyeing for awhile, namely these chocolate-glazed pumpkin cookies, and the pumpkin muffins below.  

I have to say, these cookies were good, but not great.  They probably would have been better if I hadn't had the pumpkin muffins right beside them because they were way overshadowed by the deliciousness of my muffins.  Even so, they were too cake-y, not cookie-y enough.  Without the chocolate dripped on top they would have been bland I think.  But I did enjoy them the next Monday when I brought them into work to share.

I think the cookie I'm really looking for here is more of a sugar cookie with a slight hint of pumpkin.  Something I can roll out and use cookie cutters on, not a drop and bake kind of cookie.  Well I now have about 6 cans of pumpkin thanks to all the sales at the grocery stores, so I think I'll try and find a better recipe and give it another go!

These pumpkin muffins are just the bomb.  Fantastic.  I made them once last year around this time and Mouth has been bugging me to make them again ever since (and he just happened to be one of the house guests).  I use the large Ghirardelli chocolate chips they sell at the local grocery store, which I think makes the muffins a lot more tasty than normal sized chips. That separation of flavors just makes it taste better.  Also, I added a chip to the top of each muffin which turned out so melty and delicious I always saved that bite for last.  These muffins aren't super pumpkin-y.  It's just a hint.  A perfect hint.

Husband was hoarding these like they were his precious.  He ate two before anyone showed up, ate two more that evening, and proceeded to finish the off the next two days.  I barely got any!  I ended up having to count out how many our guests and I had eaten so I could show him just how many he had gorged on.  "Eighteen muffins minus seven muffins means you ate eleven you piggy!"  It was hilarious on the last day listening to him whine to me "there are only two left!" 

Of course, one of the downsides of having a nice dinner on Halloween is the constant interuptions by trick or treaters, but I didn't mind so much.  I was sad I didn't get more...and at a more reasonable hour!  Why are your kids out at 9pm people?  Shouldn't you be walking them around when you get home from work at 6pm?  Shouldn't little Billy be tucked away in bed at that hour? *sigh* Kids today....

In other news, I just realized I don't even have one pumpkin anywhere close to completion and Thanksgiving is next week!  I'm going to be knitting all night! D:

I'm Back With Buttermilk

Sorry I didn't get a chance to post for like 2 weeks (it's only been 2 weeks, right?). Ok, maybe more like 3. Anyway, I ended up going out of town for one of those weeks. And I've been busy doing NaBloPoMo on my dog blog. Blah blah blah. Anyway, I'd like to get back to posted regularly, starting now.

I'll be posting more about what I've been cooking a little later. For now I'm just going to say how absolutely in love with buttermilk I am. I've been using it in everything! The buttermilk pancakes I made a few weeks ago were just to die for. I don't think I'll ever go back to Bisquick again. Pancakes from scratch really aren't that much more work. It's just measuring out a couple of extra ingredients. Who doesn't have time for that? Have you ever tried just putting a little buttermilk in your scrambled eggs instead of regular milk? It really adds something extra. I love it. And buttermilk biscuits? Well I haven't tried those yet. But I want to! I think buttermilk is going to be something I always have stocked in my fridge from now on.

What do you love buttermilk in?